The Stepping Stone |
On March 19, Southwestern College students will travel from San Diego to an illegal township outside Cape Town, South Africa. The trip will last 13 days and the mission is simple: Bring as many books and teaching supplies as possible; give the township’s fledgling pre-school a boost; see life from a different perspective; and tell as many people about it as possible. This blog is for that last part. Enjoy. |
South Africa’s Cheetah Outreach has 16 cheetahs, but the entire time I find myself looking at a dog.
The center has dedicated itself to saving the fastest cat on the planet, and has ironically found that the best way to do so is with a Turkish dog called the Anatolian Shepherd. The center raises money to place shepherd puppies on local ranches with the agreement that the ranchers will use the dogs instead of guns and traps to save their livestock. Because the dogs scare away cheetahs instead of kill them, they could be the best solution to saving the cat whose numbers have plummeted since 1900 from 100,000 to 7,500.
Jay and Kohlue are the center’s ambassador dogs. They have strong jaws, stocky builds, but overall look like common house dogs. Today they sleep with their chins resting on their paws and their bodies languidly spread out in the grass. From their appearance it is hard to know that they were domesticated thousands of years ago and bred with the tenacity to scare off bears, wolves and jackals but also with the temperament to befriend sheep.
To me, the shaggy white dog symbolizes solution, even if the entire idea—using dogs to save cats—seems backwards.
